Stegosaurus Fossil Sells to Hedge Fund Billionaire for Record-Breaking $45 Million

Ken Griffin, the hedge money billionaire who owns Citadel Securities, bought an astir implicit Stegosaurus fossil astatine auction connected Wednesday, according to a study from the Wall Street Journal. The acquisition terms was $44.6 million, blowing distant the aged grounds of $32 cardinal for the astir costly fossil ever bought.

A property merchandise from Sotheby’s noted determination were 7 bidders connected the Stegosaurus fossil, dubbed “Apex,” and lone identified the victor of the auction arsenic anonymous. But the Wall Street Journal was the archetypal to study the 55-year-old Griffin had enactment successful the highest bid, telling the paper helium would indebtedness it retired to a U.S. institution. “Apex was calved successful America and is going to enactment successful America,” Griffin reportedly said.

The fossil was excavated successful Moffat County, Colorado connected backstage onshore adjacent the municipality of Dinosaur successful 2022 and 2023. Dinosaur gets its unsocial sanction from its proximity to Dinosaur National Monument. Apex is described by Sotheby’s arsenic being “preserved successful exquisite detail, exhibiting small distortion, and retaining overmuch of their archetypal signifier and aboveground characteristics.”

“Virtually complete, with 254 fossil bony elements (of an approximate full of 319), the skeleton belonged to a large, robust big individual, and grounds of arthritis, indicating that it lived to an precocious age,” the auction location said successful a property release. “The specimen shows nary signs of combat related injuries, oregon grounds of post-mortem scavenging, and exhibits a fig of absorbing pathologies.”

The merchantability of Apex is arguable wrong technological circles, fixed the information that astir radical deliberation specified uncommon and important past shouldn’t beryllium controlled by the whims of backstage owners. In fact, the Washington Post notes the archetypal Sotheby’s auction listed the fossil arsenic an undetermined taxon of stegosaurus, apt due to the fact that scientists haven’t been capable to decently survey this find. Obviously, Griffin’s punctuation to the Wall Street Journal is an effort to marque it look similar helium is doing thing generous for the nationalist bully by keeping the fossil successful the United States, but it’s not twelvemonth wide what benignant of entree immoderate instauration whitethorn person to the fossil beyond conscionable being capable to enactment it connected show for immoderate play of time.

Griffin’s Citadel Securities came nether occurrence backmost successful 2021 during the Gamestop meme banal craze implicit allegations that helium had thing to bash with the outages astatine Robinhood that constricted trading. The hashtag “KenGriffinLied” adjacent started to trend, but the billionaire called the allegations conspiracy theories, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Griffin is believed to beryllium worthy astir $38 cardinal and has fixed implicit $60 cardinal to Republicans successful this predetermination cycle, according to the Financial Times. Griffin supported Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis successful the primaries and has yet to springiness immoderate wealth to Donald Trump, arsenic acold arsenic anyone knows. Griffin has antecedently said he’d marque a determination astir supporting Trump aft helium saw who the erstwhile president would take for a vice statesmanlike candidate. Trump chose Ohio Senator J.D. Vance this week, which means Griffin’s donations could widen to Trump successful the adjacent future, depending connected however helium feels astir the choice.